Not all cryptocurrencies are created equal. Don’t tell that to investors in XRP, though. In the last month the currency owned by Ripple, a company that bills itself as using blockchain technology to build the payment system of the future, soared in price by a whopping 700 percent. XRP’s overall value pushed up to nearly $150 billion and briefly made Chris Larsen, Ripple’s cofounder, one of the richest people on the planet.

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The exuberance was fueled, at least in part, by a belief that anyone buying up XRP was getting in on the next Bitcoin. But for some it could end up as a very expensive lesson that what they bought into is a different animal altogether.

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